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As President George H. W. Bush took office in January 1989, factions within his administration disagreed concerning the approach to take with regard to US-Soviet relations. In December 1988, Gorbachev had delivered what he called a “watershed” address at the United Nations, announcing that he planned unilaterally to reduce Soviet military forces by 500,000, cut conventional armaments….

As Gorbachev’s reforms began to take hold across the Soviet Union, various Soviet Republics became hotbeds of nationalist, anti-Soviet movements The Georgian SSR was one of the centers of such acitivties with protests in Georgia reaching their peak on April 4, 1989, when tens of thousands of Georgians gathered in the city of Tbilisi. Local Soviet authorities lost control over the situation….